What about inheritance assets and how it fits into community vs separate property?
I want to tell you an experience that I had recently that involved one of our family law and divorce clients. It intersects with a common question that we get regularly- determining what is community property and what is separate property under Idaho Law. This individual has a fairly significant inheritance that was received from his parents. That inheritance was used to acquire some large and significant assets during the course of the marriage.
The question came as to whether or not anything that he had done during the marriage, particularly adding his spouse to the title to some of these significant assets made a difference in changing the character of the asset from separate property to community property. He was concerned because his spouse’s attorney was telling him that there was some issue and questions to whether or not his separate inheritance property had been turned into community property during the marriage. That was the message his spouse’s attorney was sending.
Could those assets now be community property instead of separate property?
I was able to open up some relevant case law from a document I had and showed it to him. I didn’t just tell him to take my word for it- this I the way the law is. I opened the document with the case law and showed him and explained to him the in marriage- you have the date of the marriage, and everything prior to the date of the marriage- and everything prior to the date of the marriage is presumptive separate property, and everything after the date of the marriage is presumptive community property but inheritance is always separate property unless it is intentionally changed.
Intentionally changed the purpose to community property. Simply adding someone to the property of assets acquired with separate inheritance funds does not change the character of the title of the property from separate to community. It stays separate. When I showed him the legal document and the case log, and walked through it with him, he understood.
In doing so, I was able to resolve his concerns and fears. But then the kicker was- I showed him who produced the document, and it was his spouse’s attorney.
You can also watch this video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=AMhaF6HqYuk&embeds_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jjlawidaho.com%2F&feature=emb_logo
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